Writing Good eBay Title

Let’s start right at the top, with the title of your item listing. You can use up to 55 letters, numbers, characters, and spaces, and you need to accomplish two things:

• Include the appropriate information so that anyone searching for a similar item will find your item in his search results.

• Make your title stand out from all the other titles on those long listing pages.

Do those two things, and you significantly increase your chances of getting your item noticed and sold.

Let’s tackle the first point first. You have to think like the people who will be looking for your item. Most users will be using eBay’s search feature to look for specific items, so you want to put the right keywords into your item title, to make your item pop up on as many search results pages as possible.

If you’re unsure how best to word the title for your item listing, check out auctions for similar items and “borrow” their wording.

Beyond including as many relevant facts as possible in your title, how do you make your title stand out from all the other boring listings? Obviously, one technique is to employ the judicious use of CAPITAL LETTERS. The operative word here is judicious; titles with ALL capital letters step over the line into overkill.

Avoid the use of non-alphanumeric characters, such as !!! or ### or ***. eBay says that their use is prohibited, although that rule is seldom enforced. More important, eBay’s search engine sometimes ignores titles that include too many of these nonsense charactersand could exclude your listing from buyers’ search results.

Instead, I advise you to think like an advertising copywriter. What words almost always stop consumers in their tracks? Use attention-getting words such as FREE and NEW and BONUS and EXtrA and DELUXE and RAREas long as these words truly describe the item you’re selling and don’t mislead the potential bidder. (And don’t bump more important search words for these fluffier marketing termsthat won’t help your item show up in bidder searches.)